George Reginald Sims
1876 - 1965
George Reginald Sims (known by the family as “Reg”) was the third son of Walter Sims and Elizabeth Knowles Sims. He was born Sept 5, 1876 soon after the family had moved to Detroit, Michigan from Hamilton, Ontario. By the age of 2, Reg and his family relocated to Bay City, Michigan where his father became a lay preacher and newspaper editor. He grew up with four active brothers and a love of the outdoors. As did his brothers, he learned the “Christian values” of the times: thrift, Republican politics and a drive to succeed.
He was educated in local schools until entering the University of Michigan in 1895 in the Department of literature, science and the arts. It appears he never graduated since as late as 1923, the university listed him in the General catalogues as having attended 1895- ‘96 and ‘97- ‘98 but always under the category of “Non-graduate”. By 1900 he was living in Woodlawn, then a southside suburb of Chicago, near his brother Edwin. Joined by brother Harry, the two brothers established a mail order company: Sims, Wilson and Sims, which went bankrupt in 1903. He and his brothers also bought into a company that was incorporated under the name “Full Power Developing Co.” and, in 1905, the three brothers were the principal officers. Moving to New York City the next year, Reg was listed as the president of the University Publishing Company, a publisher of text books.
With Harry as a groomsman, Reg married local (Chicago) girl, Marjorie Bartlett Byington, known as Beah to the family, on Mar 1, 1904 in a home wedding in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents had previously moved from Chicago to Tennessee for health reasons. She was described in the Chicago Inter Ocean as “one of the daintiest and prettiest South Side [Chicago] girls and cross-country riders we have among the girls – and that is saying much, for many of them out-ride the men”. The married couple honeymooned in Tennessee and returned to New York, City to start married life. Their son George Reginald “Bunt” Sims was born in Manhattan, May 13, 1906.
In July 1907, Reg visited Padre, Island, Texas and by November was listed as the president of the Padre Island Development Co. His intention was to create a great seaside resort to rival Long Beach, California. He and his young family spent the next two years in Brownsville, TX while the company heavily marketed lots on the island in newspapers around the Midwest. In 1908, he registered Texas corporations of “The Padre Island Development Co. of Brownsville” and “the Texas Tarpon Club of Brownsville”. In 1908, Edwin Sims wrote glowing supportive letters to investors extoling his brother’s ability as a land developer and by November, had asked the Tarpon Beach Company of Texas to remove his name from their advertising brochure where he is listed as an advisor. By 1909 Reg had transferred his rights to the property to friends of his brother Edwin: ‘Cox and Filcher’ of San Francisco; this transfer may have been secondary to large storms causing damage to the new club house and resort buildings, but was to play a major role in Reg’s future.
By 1910, the young family had returned to Chicago, where Reg became involved in property development in Michigan. He formed Pellston Farm Land company with Ralph E. Filcher of California. Filcher had graduated from Stanford in 1899 and achieved, by examination, a California license to practice law. Filcher had invested heavily in San Francisco real estate (1900-1908) and moved to Chicago around 1909. Corporation advertisements for “cutover” land near Pellston, Michigan were in the Chicago papers from 1913 -1917 with glowing reports of the richness of the land and the incredible bargain it was for those wishing to start an orchard. At the time the two men were investing in Michigan property, Reg Sims and R E Filcher formed Filcher and Sims Real estate, a company based in Tampa, Florida. By 1911 they had acquired the Brooksville Hammock Land Company, a corporation intent on developing land in Hernando County, Florida about 45 miles northeast of Tampa. A 1911 newspaper article stated, “Deals in Brooksville real estate followed so rapidly, one upon the heels of another, that the chronometer of such proceedings has to hustle to keep in touch with them.”
IIn February 1913, with both men still based in Chicago, the Brooksville Hammock Land Company acquired the Port Richey Land Co. from P. L. Weeks. The land acquired, for $300,000, was originally part of a 30,000-acre parcel in Pasco County which surrounded the towns of Port Richey, Hudson and Fivay, (the actual site of the saw mill and whose post office lost its charter in 1918 and was abandoned). [Date supported by article in Orlando Sentinel, Feb 26, 1913] It was here that Reg Sims made his mark.
The area developed into New Port Richey was originally known as Hickory Hammock; a hollow of dense palmetto palms settled early on by James W Clark who raised cattle and oranges. Around 1883, the State of Florida sold several hundred thousand acres of interior land for 25ȼ per acre extending from Saint Petersburg to New Port Richey. Land in northern Pasco County was eventually acquired in 1905 by Aripeka Saw Mills based in Georgia and, after the timber was cut and the sawmill dismantled in 1911, Pete L. Weeks, a turpentine still operator from Brooksville, bought the holdings of the mill. Pete, his brother J S Weeks and W E Guildford (formerly of Gilette Razor Blade Co.) formed the Port Richey Company intending to develop the area into a town site. Over the next 2 years, there were few residents and a demoralized and financially distressed Pete L Weeks offered his 14,000 acres of semi-jungle along the bank of the Pithlachascotee River (often called merely the Cootie River) for sale. In February of 1913, P L Weeks sold his holdings to Brooksville Hammock Land Company owned by Reg Sims and R E Filcher. The new partners now formed the New Port Richey Land Corporation.
Worldwide advertising by the new owners of New Port Richey Land Corporation resulted in a group of 100 families from Finland buying tracts in 1913. In December 1915, Reg filed for record a “revised plan for town of New Port Richey”, a much less expansive undertaking than the plan filed years before by Weeks. The next year, Reg acquired Filcher’s interest in the company and was president of the New Port Richey Land Corp. With Bunt in Boarding School in New York (and later at Mercersburg, College Preparatory school in Pennsylvania), Reg and Bess built their house in New Port Richey and moved permanently from Chicago to Florida, but were reported to summer in Great Neck, Long Island.
A cute note on the location of Reg and Bess’ home in New Port Richey was reported in a blog written in 2018. “George Sims’ original house remains at the intersection of Grand Boulevard and Queen’s Lane (Queen’s Lane is said to have been named for Mrs. Sims who held the title of the first Queen Chasco). “[My wife] favored the site where we now live, “Sims wrote in 1922, “but I maintained that was entirely too far out of town. We argued the matter for several days, and finally compromised by building the bungalow where she wanted it.”
By 1919, R. E. Filcher had moved back to California to develop land in Los Angeles and Reg was developer, cheerleader and booster for New Port Richey. He started a Chamber of Commerce, built commercial buildings, and fostered many civic organizations. The city was incorporated in 1924 just a year after Port Richey. During the real estate boom years of the 1920’s, the city grew in population and stature. Dr. Elroy Avery, who became the first mayor, wrote “The development of New Port Richey was steady after Sims located here.” “He sold lots for $10 down and $10 per month – providing home to many families of modest means who, because of health issues, could not remain in cold climates.” Another innovation of Reg’s was “to give 10 acres of land outside town with the purchase of a lot in town.” The editor of the local newspaper, John W. Parkes, said “The hustle and bustle of George R. Sims as he hurries from place-to-place encouraging young pioneers was contagious”.
In the 1920’s New Port Richey was considered a boom town in a boom state. Hotels, theaters and golf courses were built, the railway was extended right through the middle of town. The population growth from 1920 to 1925 was 66% and increased another 30% by the next year. By 1926, notables such as Irving Berlin and Ed Wynn had bought property there. Things were looking rosy until the Great Depression; it took almost 2 decades for the population to return to pre-Depression numbers.
Many family members had property or stayed in New Port Richey, this included Herb Sims and his wife Norm Sims; Reg’s niece Helen Sims moved there for the winter after the death of her husband Mac McLaughlin, then permanently in the 1960’s. After his retirement, Edwin Walter (E.W.) Sims and his wife wintered there, but instead of building a home, they always stayed in the hotel. In fact, EW and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there together with his two brothers Reg and Herb and daughter Sue Sims Coffin and her husband Dick. New Port Richey almost became a home away from home for the expanding Sims clan.
Reg died suddenly of a stroke on May 24, 1954, after returning from a visit to his brother Bill Sims in Miami. A community funeral was held and he was buried in downtown New Port Richey without a stone to mark the site, only a redbud tree. Later, after his wife’s death in 1965, his remains were recovered and interred next to his beloved Bess in Sylvan Abbey Cemetery in Clearwater, FL.
